The Watering Hole: Wednesday, April 11, 2012: Hump Day: Corporate Personhood.

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When elected President, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt “Corporations are People” Romney plans to take things one step further. Sources deep inside the Romney Campaign revealed to The Zoo Romney’s planned Corporate Personhood bill.

The bill will define Corporate Life as existing at the point of conception. In other words, the moment anyone conceives of creating a Corporation, that Corporation is endowed with the status of personhood, with all the rights, privileges and responsibilities that carries.

For example, the insider explained, no longer will Secretaries of State be allowed to reject a Corporate filing. Rejecting a filing would be the same as a doctor performing an abortion. So what if the paperwork fails to name a Treasurer. Kids are born with birth defects all the time. The same should be true of Corporations. It just means the Corporation would go through its life disabled. In the case of lacking a Treasurer, the Corporation would not be able to make bank deposits or withdrawls, but could otherwise conduct its business just as any other person in America.

To be sure, the insider said, there are some things yet to be worked out. The recent Trevor Martin shooting adds a new wrinkle. Corporations would have the right to bear arms, and, in about 33 states, can shoot to kill any time they feel threatened. Corporate self-defense could take on a very new meaning, especially in the face of a hostile take-over.

People at Bain Capital refused to comment for this story.

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156 thoughts on “The Watering Hole: Wednesday, April 11, 2012: Hump Day: Corporate Personhood.”

  1. If you look at in the proper context.
    Mitt Rmoney is sort of a Jack Kevorkian of the corporate world.

    • I’ve suggested that before. If the Republican party really believes that “corporations are people”, then why not go ahead and nominate Koch Industries to be Vice President of the United States. I believe they were founded (i.e., “born”) in the United States, they’re more than 35 years old, and they’ve been headquartered (i.e., a “resident” here) for at least the last 14 years. If corporations really are people, then they meet all the other Constitutional requirements to be president, so they should go ahead and nominate one to be Vice President. In fact, I insist that they do this. Obviously it will get challenged right away (before the election), and then we can see how the SCOTUS dances around this one.

  3. In the beginning of this nation, corporations had a short life span such as six months. The original purpose of creating corporations was for the financial benefit of the new government. Corporations were required to justify their existence pass the 6 month mark otherwise, they were aborted. Somewhere between then and now, the government decided to stop these abortions and then some law clerk claimed that “corporations are people”. That statement was left unchallenged so that now, the Supreme Court claims that corporations deserve all the rights of people EXCEPT going to prison or the death penalty for the crimes that they commit.

    • I’ve heard that Allen West buys his underwear at Victoria’s Secret and keeps several pet goats for his own personal gratification.

    • A day or two ago, Paul Ryan was claiming that he had secret Democratic pals who loved his “plan.” I asked in a tweet if he had those names on a list in his hand. This, however, is a perfect parallel with Joe McCarthy.

  7. My very republican sister used to whine about the unions and their influence over politics. I used to point out the influence corporations have over politics and also pointed out how corporations outnumber and out spend unions when it comes to influencing our politicians and laws.

    She is also one of those alleged Christians so I asked her one time “doesn’t giving an artificial, man made entity (corporations) more human rights than humans sound just a tad bit evil?”

    • Let me guess out came the Parable of the Talents …. right wingers have poorly developed sense of humour and irony

  8. Here in Arizona, apparently you can be pregnant now before you conceive… how would that work with Corporate Personhood?

  10. Obama just pointed out that Ronald Reagan advocated tax fairness as well, essentially supporting what is now called the Buffet Rule. He went on to suggest that he’d be happy to call it the Reagan Rule to help some people in Congress accept it. Zing!

    • There’s a new DNC ad which counterpoints Obama and Reagan saying exactly that. Reagan is speaking in 2005 about a bus driver and a millionaire and how it is right that they pay an ‘equal share of their income’….. Young Turks can point you to it.

      Reagan would have polled lower than Huntsman in the primary. Cenk had a decent case for arguing that Obama is actually to the *right* of Reagan on all kinds of issues.

      • Yeah that’s the quote. And I agree, that Reagan, much as he is adored by the right, wouldn’t stand a chance in the modern GOP.

      • “Reagan is speaking in 2005″

        That would be impressive but I don’t think I’d pay to see it – I think I meant 1985

  11. Raw Story has a post with Chris Christie saying that America has become a nation of ‘couch potatoes’ waiting for a government check. How can anyone choose a career when the countryless corporations outsource any good paying job to the cheapest place they can? That’s why people have no ambition. Republican free trade has ruined more American jobs than it has created, and put too many in competition for the jobs we have left.

      • I liked a lot of the early Mary Engelbreit stuff. Now she’s on “autodraw.”

        The No Longer An Option on divergent paths is my all time favorite. I have it framed on my dresser. I get misty eyed every time I stop, look, and think about it.

  14. George Zimmerman will reportedly be charged in the shooting of Trayvon Martin, according to the Washington Post. NBC News confirms the report.

    Now if they can only locate him…

      • I wonder what this prosecutor will charge him with. In Floriduh, you can’t press murder charges unless a grand jury does it, and she nixed that. Maybe she’ll charge Zimmerman with identity theft — of Chazz Bono.

    • Breaking News Alert
      The New York Times
      Wednesday, April 11, 2012 — 3:04 PM EDT
      —–

      Special Prosecutor Schedules Announcement in Trayvon Martin Case

      The Florida special prosecutor investigating the shooting death of Trayvon Martin has scheduled a news conference for 6 p.m. Eastern, officials said on Wednesday.
      It was not yet clear whether the prosecutor, Angela B. Corey, had decided to charge George Zimmerman, a crime watch volunteer, who fatally shot Mr. Martin.

      Read More:
      http://www.nytimes.com/?emc=na

    • There was this Uhaul that showed up late on Sunday night across the road from me….

  16. At DU, William Pitt has a short post titled ‘Period. End of file.’ All the text says is ‘Liberals protest war. Conservatives protest health care.’

  17. One of the first battles over Corporate Personhood – their ‘right’ to lobby and dictate laws to government.

    Thom Hartmann reads from the first-hand account of a Tea Partier: “Retrospect of the Boston Tea Party with a Memoir of George R.T. Hewes, a Survivor of the Little Band of Patriots Who Drowned the Tea in Boston Harbor in 1773,”

    Play this to your Teabagger family member….

  18. Hopefully, they’ll have a live feed of the news conference on TPM or MSNBC and I’ll be able to live-blog the thing. I’ll do it here on the open thread.

    I know it won’t be first degree anything, since that takes a grand jury, but it better not be something like “firing a gun in city limits.”

    • The Washington Post will probably have one, they did for yesterday’s announcement by the stupid lawyers.

        • I think so, Outstanding.

          I’m of the opinion that intent can be formed in a matter of seconds, but since this case was SO messed up by the cops, no prosecutor will try to prove it.

          • I think your opinion matches that of most prosecutors as to intent. I agree, a no bill from a grand jury would have been a nightmare. I suspect Ms. Corey knows what she’s doing.
            Right wing comments on this event resemble what you find when you kick something over and all the crawly things slither out.

  19. Two Immigrants Killed in Ambush by Arizona Gunmen

    Two people were killed on Sunday night when “an unknown number of subjects in camouflage clothing armed with rifles” ambushed a truck carrying 20 to 30 undocumented immigrants near the southern Arizona town of Eloy,” according to the Pima County sheriff’s department.

    Border Patrol agents and police found one body in the bed of the pickup truck and the other nearby in the desert. The identities of the victims have not been released.

    [...]

    • I have no intention of ever setting foot in the state of Arizona. Those people are so crazy they make my home state look good.

      • I lived there for more than forty years, watched what was once a grand place deteriorate to the point where the whack jobs were lined up and ready to assume control. Got out of there six months before the last vestige of sanity — Janet Napolitano — resigned as governor to assume the chair of Homeland Security. Brewer moved in and poof, the rising tide of slime swallowed all the ships.

    • Shouldn’t that be called Amurikan Thunker?
      Someone tell that moron that paper in a typewriter can shift a tad on carriage return and cause that alignment.

      Poor babies.

    • ‘American Thinker’? Seriously Poindexter, take a day off, leave your mother’s basement, find yourself a nice girlfriend….

    • Would some one please get a video of this school’s principal masturbating in his office in the early morning hours and demand he be fired!>?

      • Looks like the ‘Let he who has no sin cast the first stone’ seed fell on stony ground there, eh Tex?

        “That has left Samford uninsured and in financial distress as she heads towards giving birth, a situation she never considered possible when she was a proud member of Heritage Christian Academy’s faculty.”

        Right on – now there’s some Christian values for you.

    • And to think she could have had an abortion and the school would have never known. Instead she chose to continue with the pregnancy and gets fired for it. These so called christians are such hypocrites. There is no satisfying them except maybe holding an aspirin between their knees.

  22. Just heard on Thom Hartmann that Zimmerman is in police custody and will most likely be charged with 2nd degree murder.

    Smart way to handle it. Yay!

    • I hope justice will be done. I saw Trayvon’s mom on TV a few minutes ago. Near tears, all the classy woman had to say was that she trusts that justice will be done.

  29. Well. Nancy Grace’s ratings will be sky high once the trial starts. What is the politics of this prosecutor? She wouldn’t bring charges just to make this an election wedge issue. Or would she?

  31. I suspect George will do minimal time if he is even convicted. The case and evidence is a mess.

  34. Charles Johnson linked to comments on a NotTooBreitBot article on the indictment. Zimmerman is being railroaded, all Negroes are guilty guilty, how dare you suggest Zimmerman did it/what happened to presumption of innocence, Blacks are all guilty thugs, this is all Obama’s doing, Zimmerman didn’t really get ordered to stay in the vehicle (it was a suggestion), if Zimmerman is not convicted the state (country?) will explode in race riots… Charles monitors this material on a daily basis and I simply do not have the stomach for it.

    Some other RWNJ is convinced that Obama will steal/buy the election (poor poor Repubs just don’t have the resources) so the only solution is to impeach! But the Far Right isn’t racist, they just know that White people are genetically and culturally superior to the n#####s.

    • Yeah, the comments at the Post are somewhat the same. The only crime ol’ George is guilty of is “littering”. Assholes. Even in recent pictures you can look into that child’s eyes and see nothing that even resembles malice.

  35. How many of y’all have watched these cartoon cat videos? There’s a whole series of them. Just search Simon’s cat on Youtube. Whoever does these has definitely been owned by many cats!

    • They are classic! I especially like the one where the cat wakes the guy up by, eventually, clawing his eyelid. My cat did that until I poured a glass of water on her. Now she just sticks her nose in my ear.

  37. Good evening, folks. Well? My loing frustration is over and I finally got to fly my new model glider today. It performed very well but my old eyes had a little trouble seeing it since I haven’t finished painting it yet. I’ll have it done by the weekend when I head out to the country to really see what it can do. I have every confidence that I will be able to shut off the motor and stay up till the batteries get low.

    • Even after all that painting in the shower – it isn’t fully coated?
      Have a grand time in the country!

      • Well? The painting in the shower was just the clear sealer. Today I sanded and shot the white. Then I’ll be able to mask and shoot the blaze orange tomorrow or the next day depending on how well cured the white is. I rushed the masking job on the tail and had to sand it all off and start over and I don’t want to repeat the mistake on the wings because I would run out of sandpaper if I had to sand off the white.

  38. Report: UC pepper spraying could have been prevented

    The infamous pepper-spraying of UC Davis student protesters by University of California police in November “should and could have been prevented,” says a highly critical report about the incident that spawned viral videos, national condemnation, and threats against at least one officer involved.

  39. I just took a quiz, and found out that if such a thing existed, I’d be sent to the Sixth Level of Hell.

    Sixth Level of Hell – The City of Dis

    You approach Satan’s wretched city where you behold a wide plain surrounded by iron walls. Before you are fields full of distress and torment terrible. Burning tombs are littered about the landscape. Inside these flaming sepulchers suffer the heretics, failing to believe in God and the afterlife, who make themselves audible by doleful sighs. You will join the wicked that lie here, and will be offered no respite. The three infernal Furies stained with blood, with limbs of women and hair of serpents, dwell in this circle of Hell.

    Is that cool or what? ;)

    • Second Level of Hell

      ——————————————————————————–

      Second Level of Hell

      ——————————————————————————–

      You have come to a place mute of all light, where the wind bellows as the sea does in a tempest. This is the realm where the lustful spend eternity. Here, sinners are blown around endlessly by the unforgiving winds of unquenchable desire as punishment for their transgressions. The infernal hurricane that never rests hurtles the spirits onward in its rapine, whirling them round, and smiting, it molests them. You have betrayed reason at the behest of your appetite for pleasure, and so here you are doomed to remain. Cleopatra and Helen of Troy are two that share in your fate.

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